


and every time we kiss, i swear i could fly

by knameless



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It of Sorts, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, canon divergent after 15x18 though, in that fixing it is not the object of the fic but is the end result !, in that several scenes from the show are altered slightly but do not affect the plot, spans from season 4 to season 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29852637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knameless/pseuds/knameless
Summary: Every time, Dean tells himself it’s the last.--aka, twelve times dean and cas kiss.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73





	1. Free To Be You And Me

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this post](https://breha.tumblr.com/post/637970611368542208/if-you-could-insert-one-dean-and-cas-kissed-once) on tumblr!  
> mostly canon compliant from chapters 1-10, except for, of course, the insertion of a kiss somewhere into each scene. as a result, a lot of the dialogue is lifted right from the supernatural episode upon which the chapter is based. the final 2 chapters diverge significantly from supernatural canon after 15x18, “despair.”
> 
> this is, of course, dedicated to mac, for encouraging my worms to run free. folie à deux.
> 
> please be tender, this is my first supernatural fic ever ;v;

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> implied sexual content-- it’s a fade-to-black. honestly blink-and-you-miss-it.

The first time it happens, well, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just... a favor. Done out of the goodness of Dean’s heart. Nothing else. Nothing more.

They escape the brothel (and, fuck, that’s already hilarious. _Escape from The Brothel_ , Dean thinks, imagining himself with an eyepatch), and as they stumble out the back door, Dean laughs and laughs and laughs, because yeah, it’s fucking _hilarious_. 

Dean is bent double, hands braced on his thighs, and Cas just stands next to him, at a total loss, with his stupid tie undone and his dumb shirt unbuttoned and his dorky coat all rumpled and it’s just-- it’s all just the funniest thing Dean’s ever experienced. He’s not even _drunk_.

“What’s so funny?” Cas asks, sounding utterly confused, and, fuck, _that’s_ hilarious too. 

Dean straightens up and puts his arm around Cas’ shoulders. “Oh, nothing,” Dean exhales, grinning still, and is pleased to realize Cas is smiling back at him, one corner of his mouth jerked up more than the other, like he’s still figuring out how to use his face but wants to give it the old college try anyway. “It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard.” Dean claps Cas’ shoulder once before letting go and crossing over to the driver’s side door, digging into his pocket for the keys. “Oh, it’s been _more_ than a long time.” He pauses, thinking. “Years.” He feels his smile fade, and, for some reason, glances over to Cas.

Cas is already inside the car. Dean breathes out through his nose and shakes his head before clambering inside as well. 

Dean slots the key into the ignition, feeling more than hearing his baby’s engine rumble to life. He’s got one hand on the steering wheel, ready to peel out, when he looks to his right and notices that Cas' tie is still askew. 

“Oh, you are such a hot mess, dude,” Dean says, laughing, and puts the car back into park. Cas just looks at him without saying a word, but he’s still got a tiny little smile on his face, like he forgot to wipe it off, and Dean can’t fucking help it, he grins dopily back. 

“Come here, dumbass,” Dean snorts, and reaches out and grabs Cas’ tie. “Can’t let you walk around like this in public.” 

He carefully slides the knot of the tie back up into place, and as his hand meets the base of Cas’ throat, Dean’s eyes flick up to Cas’ face of their own accord, and he just feels so drunk on the craziness of that evening-- they're going to _trap_ an _archangel_ tomorrow, Jesus Christ, they'll get vaporized for _sure_ \-- he's had so much fun tonight-- it’s been years-- and then Dean just says, quiet, matter-of-fact, "Hey," and tugs on Cas’ tie and leans a little closer and kisses him. 

For a few moments Cas is stiff as a corpse and his lips are sealed shut and Dean is just about ready to go, _Whoops, sorry, I slipped,_ or maybe try and blame it on the truly pathetic amount of booze he'd drunk inside, and hope Cas would be either stupid or kind enough to buy one of those, when Cas shudders through his whole body and his mouth falls open. 

Dean pulls away anyway, though, letting the tie go slack in his grip. He works his jaw a bit and wets his lips. “Cas,” he says, voice a little rough, “This okay?”

Cas stares, lips parted, and nods, solemnly, once. So Dean hauls him right back in again. 

A streetlamp outside quietly explodes. Dean does not notice it. His attention is directed elsewhere. 

As Dean crashes their mouths together, crowding Cas up against the passenger side door, Cas brings up one hand to clutch at Dean's shoulder, and Dean swears, _swears_ that even through three layers of fabric he feels the scar twitch and burn in a way it hadn't done before, not with Anna, not at all, and in response Dean's entire nervous system sings like the backing chorus of a Queen track. Galileo, _Galileo._

After a few seconds-minutes-eons Dean breaks away to inhale and Cas is looking at him with giant eyes and Dean thinks, with a sudden, intense clarity, _Well, I did promise him._

And what happens then is… none of anyone’s business at all. 

Afterwards, Dean impresses upon Cas the importance of concepts such as: “don’t kiss and tell,” and, “one night stand,” and also, “no homo.” They’re totally on the same page. This is a one-time deal. It will change nothing between them.


	2. The End

The second time it happens, _that’s not Dean’s fault, okay?_ That one ain’t on him. That one is on _Cas_ , or at least, the screwed up, freewheeling, hippie-ass, stupidly tragic version of Cas he meets in Zachariah’s messed up 2014. So maybe it’s Zachariah’s fault, technically. Dick.

Dean wishes he’d been paying more attention when everyone else was hashing out the details of the Carpool to Their Doom, because somehow he’s gotten stuck riding shotgun to the absolute last person he wanted: Cas. Not-Cas, that is. Twenty-Fourteen-Cas. Fucked-Up-Cas. Wrong-Cas. 

Dean watches as the Wrong-Cas in question grabs a pill bottle and swallows a handful dry. 

“Let me see those.”

Cas hands the bottle over cavalierly. “You want some?”

Dean ignores the obvious provocation, and squints at the label in the darkness. “Amphetamines?”

“It’s the perfect antidote to that absinthe,” Cas quips, and it’s just not funny. 

_Absinthe?_ Dean thinks. _Fucking absinthe? Who the hell drinks absinthe?_

Dean chews it over for a bit, before deciding to jump on in. “Don’t get me wrong, Cas, I, uh… I’m happy that the... stick is out of your ass, but… what’s going on--” he stutters for a second, but plows resolutely onwards “--what’s with the drugs, and the orgies, and the love guru crap?”

Cas starts laughing before Dean’s finished his sentence, brittle and staccato and just fucking _awful_. 

“What’s so funny?” Dean says, disturbed. 

Cas looks at him fully then, grinning wide. “Dean, I’m not an angel anymore.”

“What?” Dean bites off, hoping he’d somehow heard it wrong. 

“Yeah, I went mortal,” Cas says, with an airy sort of vindictiveness. 

“What do you mean? How?”

Cas puts on a _who-knows-who-cares_ face, complete with half-assed shrug. “I think it had something to do with the other angels leaving, but uh… when they bailed, my mojo just kinda--” he makes a noise like _pshewww_ “--drained away.” Dean blinks. Everything about this is fucked up. “Now, you know,” Cas continues, “I’m practically human.” He taps his fingers on the steering wheel absentmindedly. “I mean, Dean, I’m all but useless. Last year, broke my foot--” he pauses, emphatically, “--laid up for _two months._ ” 

Dean doesn’t know what to say, so he says, “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Cas agrees.

“So you’re human,” Dean says, unable to make it a question.

Cas inclines his head. 

Dean looks away, out the passenger side window. “Well, welcome to the club,” he says, voice low.

“Thanks,” Cas says, condescending, “Except, I used to belong to a much better club.” _Asshole,_ Dean thinks, to try and distract himself from how shitty he feels right now. “And now I’m powerless. I’m hapless, I’m hopeless-- I mean why the hell _not_ bury myself in decadence,” Cas says, slowly, forcefully. “Right? It’s the end, baby! That’s what decadence is for!”

Dean can’t help but think that it sounds like Cas is trying to convince himself. 

“Why _not_ bang a few gongs before the lights go out?” Cas concludes, coming across more sardonic than anything.

“Can’t say I can argue with that,” Dean says hollowly, squinting out the window. He shifts in his seat, turning around to face Cas again. “But really? This is how you’re gonna go out? Cas, you didn’t have to do this. To come with us.”

Cas smiles wanly, throwing Dean a glance. “Oh, but of course I did.”

Dean meets his gaze. “You’re driving to your death, man. And you know it.”

Cas shrugs, looks away, says nothing. 

That’s not good enough. “Why?” Dean presses. 

Cas laughs and shakes his head, flexing his hands a little on the steering wheel. “Oh, man. You don’t get it? Really?”

“Get _what?_ ” Dean snaps, concern sublimating into anger. “Cas, you don’t have to die with the rest of them, with-- with him, the other me--”

“Does it bother you that much?” Cas asks mildly. 

“Yes!” Dean shouts, and smacks the dashboard. “Yes! It’s fucked up! Giving up like this, it’s not you, Cas!”

“It’s not _your_ Cas,” Cas corrects. 

Dean grits his teeth, and they drive in silence for a few minutes. The road shoots along beneath them in a dark, featureless blur. Dean digs his fingernails into his palm until it hurts, and then some. A sick part of him looks at this Cas going to his death and thinks, _Good_. This Cas should never have existed in the first place. Dean can barely stand to look at him, but he also can’t get him out of his head. 

“I hope you’re right,” Dean says abruptly. 

“Hm?”

“I hope that this,” Dean sneers, gesturing angrily towards Cas. “isn’t _my_ Cas. I hope my Cas is _better_ than this.”

Cas just stares at him levelly, like Dean is a mildly interesting bug, or a ballistics target he’s drawn a bead on, and for once he actually looks like the old Cas, the real Cas, Dean's Cas. “So do I,” he replies. “Just like I hope _you_... are better than him.”

“Him,” Dean repeats. “The other me.” 

Cas nods. “He-- well, you-- that is,” Cas says, smirking hollowly, “ _my_ you.” Dean feels a twist in his stomach at the phrasing. 

“He should have become,” Cas closes his eyes, briefly, as though he’s remembering something from long ago, “a great man.”

“And you?” Dean asks, not sure why he feels moved to do so. “What should you have become?”

Cas opens his eyes, and stares the road down like the barrel of a gun. “Something else.”

He shrugs. “But instead, we become this. The only thing I think we have left, Dean and me, is each other.” He looks over at Dean, and for once there’s no sarcasm, no bitterness, no shallow smirk. “If Dean says it’s time to go out in a blaze of glory, win or lose, so be it. I’m in,” Cas says simply. “But then…” He smiles easily at Dean. “That’s just how I roll.”

There are a few seconds of quiet, with nothing but the rumble of the road beneath them, and Dean's own pulse thumping in his ears. Cas watches him, expression soft, yet still unreadable.

Then, before Dean has time to register what's happening, Cas has leaned over, caught Dean's chin in his hand, and pressed their mouths together. The kiss is quick, and chaste, and utterly overwhelming, and Dean is so blindsided he almost forgets that they're in a goddamn moving vehicle. 

“What the fuck!?” Dean sputters, jerking back. “You’re _driving!_ Are you _insane?_ ”

Cas just laughs, unbothered, and turns back to the road. “Probably, yeah.”

Dean doesn’t find it funny. “What was that,” he spits out. 

Cas rolls his eyes, like Dean is acting unreasonable here. “You said it yourself. I’m driving to my death. And, hey, call it selfish, call it sentimental-- I wanted one last goodbye kiss.” He pauses, tilting his head like the thought is a ball bearing rolling around inside his skull, and he's trying to coax it into the hundred-point divot. “How _human_ of me.”

“What, and I’m just the closest warm body around?” Dean snaps, freaked out and pissed off, but also weirdly stung.

Cas turns his head to look at him. “No, Dean,” he says quietly. “You were always more than that to me.”

Dean feels as though his throat has been welded shut, and he has to pry it open with the jaws of life to get the next few words out. When they come, they’re rough and raw. “Don’t fucking do that. You can’t do that to me. That’s messed up. I’m not-- I’m not _him_. ”

Cas just sighs, a weird little half-smile stuck on his face, and contemplates the horizon. “Ah, but he used to be _you_. And _that_ was the Dean I fell for.”

Cas _could_ mean the angel type of falling, here. But Dean knows he doesn’t. He means the more metaphorical type of falling. The human type of falling. This is too much for Dean. He snaps his jaw shut so fast his teeth clack. 

Cas rolls his eyes; Dean feels it more than sees it. “Sorry for _making you uncomfortable_ ,” he says, patronizingly, “But can you blame me?” 

He casts his gaze at Dean then, raises his eyebrows. He looks exhausted and threadbare and suddenly, very sober. He looks like a man who knows he’s going to die in the morning, and is halfway relieved. “I miss him.”

They spend the rest of the drive in total silence. Eventually, the sun starts to peek over the trees, all rosy and soft like it doesn’t know that the Apocalypse already came and went and nobody’s happy to see the sunrise anymore. 

_I ruined him,_ Dean thinks, shellshocked. The realization pounds in his skull, thumping against the back of his eyes, and he feels sick from it. _I made him fall. I turned him into this. And now he's gonna die because of me._

So when Dean gets back to his own timeline, he puts a hand on his Cas’ shoulder and says “Don’t ever change,” under the streetlamps. And at the same time, in his head, Dean says to himself, _Don’t ever make him change._

_Don’t let him fall in love with you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the canon divergence line here is a little weird. sort of starts with “can’t say i can argue with that”-- however, some of the dialogue following is actually based upon an earlier draft of the end’s script. more on the info that i used as a frame to write this scene here: [(x)](https://hidefan.tumblr.com/post/6426482739/you-have-to-love-ben-edlund-and-misha-of-course) [(x)](https://hidefan.tumblr.com/post/6431738124/sorry-if-youve-already-answered-this-but-i-was) [(x)](https://hidefan.tumblr.com/post/35021724489/504-loving-you-darling-till-the-end-future)


	3. Point of No Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon-typical violence <3

The third one, that’s _also_ not Dean’s fault. Not entirely.

Dean can admit that blasting Cas’ ass to Timbuktu was a bit of a dick move. He’s not one hundred percent certain how the banishing sigils actually work, but since the angels never do seem happy about it, Dean has to assume the process is fairly uncomfortable. So he can get why Cas would maybe come back pissed. He just hadn’t thought the motherfucker would get back so soon. Or _so_ pissed. 

“What are you, crazy?” Dean yells, as his body becomes forcibly acquainted with a brick wall. 

“I rebelled for this?” Cas is roaring, and he throws Dean to the opposite wall, striking him in the face, the throat, the chest, the stomach. He seizes Dean’s collar, gets up close, and growls, “So that you could surrender to them?” _Growls_ it, like an earthquake, like an avalanche, so forceful Dean almost thinks he can see the air wobble from the soundwaves-- but that may just be dizziness from Cas trying to make Dean's brain into a martini for James Bond. 

Cas grabs him by the jacket and tosses him like a ragdoll, and his fists slam into Dean’s face like cinderblocks. Dean tastes metal. 

“Cas,” Dean gasps, blood thickening his words, “Please!”

Cas' face is inches away, his entire body pressed up against Dean’s, pinning him helpless to the wall. Dean sucks in a breath and smells ozone saturating the air, feels the hairs on his arms raise up as honest-to-God no-bullshit not-a-goddamn-metaphor static electricity races across his skin. He cannot move an inch. Dean’s always known that Cas was lightning in a bottle. Now, stupidly, Dean's gone and uncorked him, and not in the sexy way. He’s beginning to realize that Cas could very well fucking kill him here in this alleyway, and Dean can’t lift a goddamn finger. He's never seen Cas like this. Not ever. 

“I gave _everything_ for you,” Cas snarls, like an animal, like a baseball bat through plate glass. “ _And this is what you give to me_.”

A few more blows land, and Dean hears the rattle of the chain link fence loud in his ears as he collides with it. He slumps to the ground and spits blood. Cas looks down at him contemptuously, eyes flashing with blue-white light, electricity invisibly crackling in the air and heat radiating off his body in waves. 

Dean gazes up at him with cold rage and thinks, _So kill me. Send me back to Hell._

“Do it,” Dean rasps. He raises his voice, forcing the words through his battered windpipe. “Just do it!”

He braces himself. But the smiting never comes. After a few pregnant seconds, Cas’ fist unclenches and hangs limply at his side. Dean is about to scoff and make a biting comment when Cas drops to his knees, grabs Dean by the front of his shirt, hauls him up, and kisses him. It’s hard and angry and ungentle, antigentle as Cas licks his way into Dean’s mouth, devours him whole. 

And Dean thinks, _Cas_ , and despite himself, even though he’s pissed, even though he’s scared, even though he’s bruised, he fists one hand in Cas’ coat and kisses him back with everything he’s got. Cas surges forward so that he’s almost straddling Dean, and their teeth knock together, and Dean doesn’t even _care_ , not that Cas is a messy kisser or that Dean is covered in blood or that Cas is a dude or that they’re still mad at each other or that the Apocalypse is friggin’ nigh. 

_When the fuck did you learn to do this?_ Dean thinks as Cas bites down on Dean’s lip, because Cas certainly wasn’t this-- wasn’t so-- well, it certainly wasn’t like _this_ in the front seat of the Impala. 

And then they both seem to come to their senses, jerking apart at the same moment. For a few seconds, they just sit on the ground, glaring at each other, chests heaving. The scents of ozone and blood, like bleach and rust respectively, fight to take up primary residence in Dean's nostrils. “Cas--” Dean starts, and Cas growls, “Shut up, Dean.”

Incensed, Dean bites back, “Well, fuck you too, Cas.”

Cas glowers at him. Then he raises two fingers to Dean's temple, and blackness floods across Dean's field of vision.

Later, when Dean wakes up, handcuffed to a cot in Bobby’s panic room, he decides that the kiss was just a really weird dream, brought on by a head injury combined with Cas' magic mindfuckery. Cas seems to have reached a similar conclusion. They do not talk about the alleyway ever again.


	4. Hunter Heroici

The fourth time is a fluke. 

Cas is sitting on Dean’s bed, going through Dean’s stuff like it’s nothing, like he owns it, and, God help him, Dean can’t bring himself to say a word. He buckles down and stares at the laptop, trying valiantly to keep his eyes off Cas and just read. He manages the first, but at the cost of the second; he has to focus so hard on keeping his eyes glued to the screen that he can’t actually absorb any of the words, and finds himself reading the same paragraph over and over and fucking over again. 

Cas has got ahold of Dad’s journal now, and if it was anyone else, _anyone_ else, Dean would have marched over there and snatched it out of their hands. The intel on monsters, fine, but there’s-- well, there’s _other_ shit in there too. There’s his and Sammy’s _childhoods_ in there. And that’s-- it’s _personal_. Dean wouldn’t let just anyone read about that. He doesn’t know why he’s letting Cas read about it. 

Maybe it’s because Dean is so worried about the guy lately. Dean doesn’t wanna be a dick to him, not when he’s just gotten back from friggin’ Purgatory, with missing memories to boot. Cas _seems_ fine, on the surface-- he definitely _acts_ like he’s fine, but… sometimes there are moments. Where Cas looks a little vacant. Says something a little off. Where Cas seems like he’s trying too _hard_ to be fine. 

“Your father,” Cas comments, apropos of nothing, the first thing he's said in an hour, and Dean blinks. “Beautiful handwriting.”

Dean frowns. “How you feelin’, Cas?”

Cas, with practiced nonchalance that he maybe should have practiced a little more, turns a page. “I’m fine.” A classic move, right out of the Dean Winchester playbook itself. 

“Well, I just-- I know that when,” Dean takes a deep breath, “I got puked out of purgatory, it took me a few weeks to… find my sea legs.” 

Cas spares Dean a single glance before returning to the journal. “I’m fine,” he says again, and fuck if after so many years on the road Dean doesn’t know an off-ramp when he sees one. Dean keeps right on driving. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m… I’m happy you’re back, I’m-- I’m friggin’ thrilled. It’s just this whole mysterious-resurrection-thing…”

Cas looks up, but not at Dean, instead gazing at the space on the wall above the shitty motel TV like he’s cataloguing every single ding in the paint. 

“It always has one motherfucker of a downside,” Dean finishes. 

Cas shuts the journal. “So. What do you want me to do?” Looking for orders. 

What Dean thinks is: _I want you to be okay, I want you to be safe, I want you to stay here, I want you to never leave me like that again_. If he phrased all those wants as orders, would Cas listen? Would Cas stay if Dean told him to? Would Cas be happy if Dean commanded it? What about if Dean just asked for it?

What Dean says is: “Maybe take a trip upstairs.”

“To Heaven?”

Dean clasps his hands together loosely. “Yeah, poke around, see if the God Squad can’t tell us how you got out.”

“No,” Cas says abruptly. Dean watches Cas’ throat ripple as he swallows, once. 

Dean laughs, more of an exhale than anything, and dips his eyes down to his fingers, twisting them together. “Look, man, I-I hate those flyin’ ass-monkeys just as much as you do, but--”

“ _Dean,_ ” Cas interrupts, sharp and loud and… upset. “I said no.”

Dean regards him for a couple seconds. Then he shuts the laptop with one hand, stands up, walks over, and plants himself on the bed across from Cas. 

“Talk to me.”

For a second, Cas looks small, childlike, clasping Dad’s journal between his palms like a hymnal and gazing straight ahead at the opposite wall. “Dean, I…” He sighs, and sets the book down on the bed. He shifts to face Dean, hands braced on his knees. He looks Dean in the eye. 

And they're less than three feet apart on those separate motel beds.

“When I was… bad,” Cas starts, squinting as though even he knows that's the understatement of the century, “and I had all those things, the… Leviathans. Writhing inside me…” Cas still has his eyes zeroed in on Dean-- his demeanor raw, but resolute. For a moment Dean regrets pushing. He feels like what Cas is about to say might be too big. 

“I caused a lot of suffering, on Earth,” Cas continues, “but I _devastated_ Heaven. I-- _vaporized_ thousands of my own kind, and I, I,” he stumbles over his words, glancing down and away before returning his eyes to Dean’s, “I can’t go back.” 

Dean thinks he gets it. “‘Cause if you do, the angels will kill you.” That sucks for Cas, that must be awful, to be an exile, to know you can never come home. Dean knows how bad it hurts when your own family wants nothing to do with you. It makes sense that Cas would be so torn up over this. 

But he’s wrong, because then Cas goes, “Because if I see what Heaven’s become, what I,” he trails off, glancing away again, “what I made of it...” Cas turns his gaze back to Dean. “I’m afraid I might kill _myself_.” He says it matter-of-factly, like it’s no big deal, but his eyes are so, so sad. 

And they're less than three feet apart on those separate motel beds.

Dean stares at him for a few seconds and tries to mask his surprise, because it's like he keeps forgetting that yes, Cas _feels,_ Cas _loves_ , and Cas _hurts_. And maybe he keeps forgetting that because he _wants_ to forget it, because if he lets himself know that and believe it, then Dean will have to look deep inside himself and think about things he'd long ago stamped down and shoved away as _never gonna happen, not in a million years_ , and think about how maybe, yeah, maybe in a million years. Maybe in less than a million years. Maybe now. Maybe right now. 

Dean stands up. Then he sits down on the other bed, next to Cas, and covers the nape of Cas' neck with his hand. They're so close that their thighs are touching. Dean raises his eyebrows, looks Cas in the eye, and takes a breath. 

“Let it go, Cas,” Dean says gently, firmly. “Heaven ain’t worth killing yourself over.” 

Cas starts to reply, no doubt to say something miserable and self-deprecating and stupid. 

Dean kisses him.

It’s been years since Dean last felt Cas’ mouth on his. But hell if it ain’t just like riding a bike. Cas opens up at once, sighing into Dean’s mouth. He lays one hand on the curve of Dean’s shoulder, and the scar may be long gone but Dean still shivers at the warmth of Cas’ palm. In return, Dean slides his hand up Cas’ neck into his hair, and the sound that Cas makes then has Dean reconsidering his previous statement. It ain't just like riding a bike. It's like doing two hundred on a Kawasaki.

Dean finds himself trying to crawl into Cas' lap, but Cas just sort of sinks down backwards so that Dean ends up propped up diagonally over him. Which is fine. Cas' coat ripples beneath him like silty river water and he stares up at Dean with those pale blue eyes and when Dean presses a hand to Cas' waist the bulb of the lamp on the nightstand starts to buzz like a cicada.

Dean doesn’t notice it, but he has one knee planted squarely on his father's journal. 

Revelling in the newfound horizontality, Dean brings a hand up to touch Cas’ jaw, gently tipping it upwards so he can kiss his way from Cas’ collarbone to his lower lip and back again, and back again, and back again. Cas, for his part, lets Dean do it to him, lies back as Dean tells him _I want you, I want you so bad_ with his lips and his tongue and his hands and his hips. "Cas," Dean whispers into the other's chest, shirt buttons digging into his chin. 

"Dean," Cas answers. Then he catches Dean’s face in his palm and guides him close, kissing him slowly and deeply and driving Dean out of his mind. His hands rove over Dean’s body, skating along his spine and pressing against his chest, grasping at his arms and tracing the shell of his ear. Dean’s hair stands to attention wherever Cas touches, electricity dancing across his skin, building in intensity as Cas’ breathing becomes more labored. Dean shivers and shudders and writhes atop him, one of Cas’ burning hot hands splayed over Dean’s back, holding him down against Cas’ chest. Cas is so warm. He's always so warm. The lights in the room flicker.

"Cas, I--" The next few words stick in his throat, so he seals his mouth to Cas' and hopes it gets the message across. _I want you, with me and all over me and inside me, by my side and on my mouth and in my arms. Always. I don't care what you've done. I want you, I just want you._ Dean rolls his hips and then--

Dean jerks back. "Did you just shock me?" he asks incredulously, lifting a hand to his mouth. "With your _tongue_?" 

Cas has the decency to look embarrassed. "I didn't intend--"

"You know what? Forget it," Dean breathes. 

He sinks back down to meet Cas' mouth, and there he remains, for what could be three hours and what could be three seconds, and it's _nice_ , and Dean thinks that maybe he could stay like this for the rest of his life and die a very happy man.

But then Dean hears Sam’s key rattling in the lock and in three seconds flat he’s leapt up and just about vaulted across the room to what he thinks is probably a respectable, heterosexual distance from the bed, Cas’ spit still drying on his lips. 

Sam’s chattering away about the robberies and, dear God, Dean has never cared less about a case before in his life, but apparently Sam is too busy dumping files onto the shitty little motel table to notice anything out of the ordinary. Thankfully, Cas' impromptu-makeout-sesh rumpledness isn't that much different from his normal rumpledness. 

Dean crosses his arms over his chest, feeling weirdly exposed even though he’s fully clothed, feeling like he’s walking around with his skin flayed off and his heart visible through his ribcage as it pumps, way too fast. He can still feel Cas’ jaw underneath his fingertips.

As Sam spreads a map across the table, tracing black marker lines with a fingertip, Dean catches Cas staring at him, pale and-- Dean doesn’t know what the expression is on Cas’ face, he doesn’t want to think about what it is, so he just tries to subtly plead, using the corners of his mouth and the muscles between his eyebrows, for Cas to just forget it. Forget it ever happened. Don’t let Sam think something’s up. He can’t know about this ( _he can’t know I’m like this_ ). Please, Cas. Please.

And Cas, thank God, seems to get the message.


	5. Goodbye Stranger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon-typical violence <3 <3

Dean doesn’t like to think about the fifth time. He was a fucking idiot for believing it could ever end up any different. And Cas is a fucking asshole for-- all the rest.

Dean’s pretty unimpressed with Heaven’s locksmiths, seeing as how he was able to jimmy the container of the all-important angel tablet open with a rusty knife. But whatever. Who’s he to complain about them making his job easier? Dean pops the lid open, while Cas scans the crypt warily, like he’s expecting demons to start pouring into the room at any second. 

There she is. A totally unassuming chunk of rock, housing one of the most powerful magical objects ever handed down from Heaven. Dean raises his eyebrows at Cas. “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”

“Good,” Cas replies. “Hand it to me and I’ll take it to Heaven.”

Dean looks up sharply, the rock already in his hands. He eyeballs Cas for a few seconds. “No, we will take it to _Kevin_ , so he can translate,” Dean says carefully. 

“Right.” There’s an uneasy pause. “Of course, I’ll take it to him right away.” Cas inclines his head. “No time to waste.”

Dean works his jaw a little, unsettled and wary. “Well, he’s not that far. I’ve been meaning to… go check on him, bring him some supplies.” Dean reflexively tightens his grip on the rock. The lightness in his voice sounds fake even to him.

“I can resupply the prophet, Dean,” Cas says. His tone is dispassionate yet deadly, leaving no room for argument. Dean is reminded, chillingly, of a Cas he met in a warehouse over the crumpled bodies of Claire and Amelia Novak, a Cas who said he served Heaven, not man, and certainly not Dean, a Cas who was resolute and inhuman and dangerous. 

Dean has a very bad feeling about this.

“You know, why don’t, uh-- why don’t Sam and I take it over to him, and you can get back to your mission?” Dean suggests. He takes a step backwards. Cas takes a step forward. Dean lets an edge creep into his voice. ”Finding the other half of the demon tablet, that is… priority, isn’t it?”

Cas gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “I can’t let you take that, Dean.” 

_Okay, HAL 9000,_ is what Dean would say if he wasn’t so goddamn freaked out right now. 

Instead, Dean stiffens, and returns, “Can’t or won’t?”

Cas’ reply is grim. “Both.”

Dean feels his pulse beat one, two, three times. He looks down at the rock. He looks up at Cas’ shuttered eyes. Dean takes a step closer, reflexively squaring up like he’s ready for a fight. His blood roars in his ears. “How did you get out of Purgatory, Cas?”

But when Cas steps forward without a word, Dean immediately stumbles backwards, bluff called. Something’s gone very wrong here. “Just tell me how you got out of Purgatory,” Dean hears himself say, pleading. 

Cas’ face may as well be carved in stone. 

“ _Be honest_ with me-- for the first time since you’ve been back-- and this is yours.” Dean indicates the rock with a jerk of his chin.

There’s a flash of metal, a quiet rasp. The angel blade is gripped tightly in Cas’ hand. 

Very fucking wrong. 

“Cas,” Dean says, voice progressively rising in volume as he continues, “Cas, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you, but if you’re in there and you can hear me, you don’t have to do this.”

Cas marches forward, and swings his blade down in a brutal arc. 

“Cas!” Dean yells, instinctively throwing the rock up like a shield to block the blow. The blade glances off, spawning a short-lived fireworks show of blue sparks. Thunder crashes loudly, coming from the skies outside and within the crypt at the same time. Apparently the tablet doesn’t appreciate being used as a shield, but frankly, Dean has bigger fish to fry right now. 

“Cas, fight this, this is not you!” Dean shouts, trying to choke down his rising panic. “Fight it!”

Another blow, another spray of sparks. 

Then, without warning, Cas shrinks back, turning away from Dean and curling in on himself. His voice rips out from his chest, raw and horror-struck. The words don't make any sense. “What have you done to me-- Naomi--”

Dean seizes upon Cas’ break in concentration. “Who’s Naomi?” he presses, and takes a step forward. He lays a hand on Cas’ shoulder. “Cas--”

Cas twists his head around, and Dean catches a glimpse of his face in the uneven light-- stricken and wild-eyed as he pants-- before Cas’ arm strikes out, backhanding Dean so hard he flies into the wall. Dean scrambles to his feet almost immediately, snatching the rock from where he dropped it-- _better vamoose, Winchester, you’ve fucked up big time_ \-- but Cas is too quick, practically teleporting right in front of him. Dean throws a punch on instinct, but Cas catches it in an iron grip. A sharp twist, and Dean’s wrist snaps, crackles, and pops, just like the cereal. He falls to his knees, overcome by a wave of bright-white pain and nausea. His hold loosens on the rock. Lightning flashes outside, scattering light around the crypt. 

Dean’s too busy getting slugged in the face to care about the weather, but he reels back, nose gushing blood, to notice that all of a sudden Cas’ gaze is drawn somewhere else-- the tablet, revealed, lying on the ground amidst chunks of the rougher stone shell. 

“You want it?” Dean spits. “Take it.”

Cas slowly turns his eyes-- flinty, cold, blank-- back onto Dean.

Dean continues: “But you’re gonna have to kill me first.” Dean’s left eye is swelling up, so while he’s still capable, he strikes out with the most venomous glare in his quiver. “Come on, you coward. Do it.” Cas doesn’t move. “Do it!” Dean bellows. 

This time, Cas obeys. He hits Dean again and again and again, and Dean’s head snaps back hard with every one. Over and over the blows rain down, battering Dean’s face until he feels the sickening crush of his cheekbone caving in, the snap of his nose breaking. And Cas keeps going. Dean can barely breathe, let alone speak. But he has to try.

“Cas, Cas,” Dean rasps. Through his one good eye, he sees Cas raise his arm, a glint of light traveling down the length of his blade as he hefts it high. “I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me.” Dean has to believe Cas is in there. Dean has to believe Cas can hear him. “Cas,” he pleads, “ _it’s me._ ” 

_Please, Cas, please hear me. You have to hear me_. “We’re family. We need you.” Dean swallows, gulping blood. 

If what he's about to do doesn’t work, Cas is going to kill him, and so be it, because Dean doesn’t think he can live with having said this if it’s all for nothing. 

“I need you.”

Cas is silent. Dean’s breath rattles out of his lungs. “Cas,” he says, for the hundredth, thousandth, millionth time, like a magic word, like a prayer.

The glint dips, and plummets to the floor. 

Cas releases Dean’s busted arm-- the absence of the pressure almost hurts more, and a wounded-animal noise punches its way out of Dean’s chest as he gasps for air, eyes screwed shut against the pain in his broken forearm and ruined face both. Then-- _What the hell?_ \-- a blazing pulse pierces through his eyelids, and Dean forces himself to pry his eyes back open. 

Cas is all lit up. He’s gripping the tablet in both hands, light radiating from it like a white-hot furnace, illuminating every crevice of the crypt, while a high-pitched ringing drives spikes into Dean’s skull. Cas’ eyes glow like twin stars, boring unrelentingly through Dean. The light builds and builds, until Dean has to shield his face for fear of going blind. 

And then, just as suddenly, it’s all gone. The crypt is dark and gloomy again, silent but for Dean’s labored breathing. Cas holds the tablet in his hands. Dean is still alive. 

“Cas?” he whispers, barely daring to hope. 

Cas reaches out one arm, open palm, and Dean thinks of every single smiting he’s ever witnessed. 

“No,” he says, brokenly. He failed.

“Cas,” he begs. “Cas.” He can’t say anything more than that single syllable. He can barely move his battered body. He’s too weak to push Cas away. So he grasps at Cas’ arm, clutches the fabric of his sleeve, and holds tight as the killing blow moves ever closer. _I’m sorry,_ Dean thinks. _I failed you again._ He shuts his eyes. He doesn’t want to watch Cas kill him. 

Cas’ hand slides home. His palm slots into place on the side of Dean’s cheek, not the center of his forehead. And then, to Dean’s utter shock, he feels the old familiar freezing-hot fizz of grace leaching into his body, slipping beneath his skin and spreading out, knitting blood vessels, tendons, bones back together, encouraging little cells to divide ad infinitum. It's that minty-fresh just-brushed feeling, but everywhere. Less than a second, and only the memory of the pain persists. 

Dean lets go of the sleeve in bewilderment, and then feels Cas’ hand drop immediately after. Dean’s eyes fly open.

Cas stands there before him, a thousand feet tall, a mountain, a skyscraper ( _approximately the size of your Chrysler building_ ). 

“I’m so sorry, Dean.”

“What the hell just happened?” Dean demands.

Cas doesn’t answer. Instead, he sinks to his knees, heavy and inexorable as a rockslide. Cas takes Dean’s face in both of his hands, swiping a thumb over Dean’s newly reconstructed cheekbone. 

“Cas,” Dean says, softer, and wraps one hand around Cas’ wrist, not pulling it away, just holding onto him. Cas’ face is miserable, but there’s-- there’s something else there, and Dean can’t tell what it is. He’s pretty sure Cas is back from whatever fucking episode he just had, but this is freaking Dean out. “You’ve gotta start talkin’, man, or I’m gonna--”

Cas sighs, deep and exhausted, like he’s expelling every single breath he’s ever taken from his body. Then he kisses Dean. 

Dean is so surprised he gasps, actually gasps into Cas’ mouth, and his grip tightens into an iron manacle around Cas’ wrist. He falters with his other arm for a moment, unsure of what to do with it, before deciding to sling it around Cas’ back and pull him flush against Dean’s chest. Cas still has Dean’s face cupped in his hands, and he’s kissing him like he doesn’t need to breathe-- which, wait, he doesn’t. Dean, however, does, so, with no small amount of effort, he separates their mouths and tucks his forehead into the dip between Cas’ shoulder and neck, just inhaling and exhaling slowly. His guts are flip-flopping, his heart is pounding, but Dean thinks, feverishly, that it’s gonna work out. Cas is back and whatever’s happening, whatever’s going on with the tablet and the gates and Naomi, whoever that is, they’ll figure it out. They’ll figure it out together. Because this-- this means-- this has to mean that Cas is sticking around. 

Dean lifts his head to find Cas’ mouth again, and Cas receives him hungrily. 

Cas kisses Dean on the mouth, the cheek, the jaw, the forehead, over and over, as if he’s blessing him, and, fuck, Dean feels _worshipped_. Cas nudges Dean’s thighs open like Moses parting the Red Sea, and then he settles between them, so warm against Dean’s front, and Dean can’t think anything more coherent than, _Cas, Cas, Cas_. He holds tight to Cas' lapels, knuckles white, drinking Cas in and allowing himself to be drunk in turn. Cas sips tenderly at Dean’s mouth and Dean feels like maybe if Cas wanted to eat Dean alive, Dean would let him. Like if Dean was gonna kneel at any altar, it would be this one. 

“I’m sorry,” Cas whispers, between kisses, “Dean, I’m sorry.”

But it turns out that sorry don’t mean much, because, just like always, Cas still ends up leaving.


	6. Sacrifice

The sixth time is… yeah. That one’s on Dean. 

“You really think it’s wise to be drinking on the job?” Cas says skeptically.

Dean just looks at him, unimpressed. “What show _you_ been watchin’?”

Cas rolls his eyes, but makes no reply. 

“Talk to me,” Dean says, lifting the bottle to his mouth. “Are you sure about this?” He takes a swig, purses his lips. “I mean it’s one thing, me and Sammy slamming the gates to the pit, but you, you’re… you’re boardin’ up Heaven.” He hesitates, because he couldn’t actually give a single shit about Heaven getting screwed over; if he never has to deal with angels meddling in his life again, it’ll be too soon. His real problem is much stupider, pettier, more personal. And for that reason it’s impossible to say out loud. But he can talk around it, he can get close to it, and maybe Cas will understand. 

This is the part that bothers Dean: “And you’re lockin’ the door behind you.” It comes out a bit more accusatory than he intended, his bitterness slipping out in his tone too fast for him to rein it back in. But damn it. Cas is leaving again. And this time, it’ll be for good. 

Cas, his face carved in profile, answers, “Yeah. I know.” He picks up the bottle that Dean slid his way earlier and drinks. Dean averts his eyes briefly when Cas’ lips touch the rim. 

“You did a lot of damage up there, man,” Dean ventures. He knows he probably can't appeal to Cas’ sense of preservation-- _the guy doesn’t fucking have one_ \-- but he has to give it a shot. “You think they’re just gonna let that slide?”

“Do you mean…” Cas lets out a tired breath. “Do I think they’ll. Kill me?” He pauses, studying the liquor bottles lined up behind the bar. “Yeah, they might.” Finally he turns his face towards Dean’s. They’re shoulder to shoulder. Dean’s eyes rove over Cas’ face. Drinking him in. Last time. Last time. Last time. 

“So this is it?” Dean says, and the corner of Cas’ mouth quirks up slightly. 

Dean nods, holding himself stiff, and stares down at the sticky bartop. “E.T. goes home.” He knows Cas probably won’t get the reference, and that’s why he says it. He can’t just _say_ what he’s really thinking. Not out loud, not without a shield-- it’s too raw, it’s too honest, it’s too close to his heart. 

He can feel Cas’ eyes on the side of his face, can just imagine his confused frown. 

Dean picks his head up, parts his lips. Gives in. “It’s from a movie,” he says quietly. “About an alien who crash-lands in California and makes friends with this dorky kid. And the alien learns about life on Earth. And he and the kid have this freaky special mind connection. And he can heal people. Sometimes he glows.”

Cas furrows his brow. “Am I the alien?”

Dean sighs. “Yes.”

Cas seems to turn this over in his mind. “Does that make you the dorky kid?” he asks. 

Dean looks down at his hands, cradling the bottle between his fingertips. “I guess.”

“How does the movie end?”

“The alien can’t survive on Earth. So his people come back to get him. And the kid never sees him again.” Dean tenses his fingers around the bottle. “But the kid never forgets him, either.” He lifts his eyes to find Cas watching him, forehead creased and lips parted ever so slightly, and Dean's chest just seizes up. 

Because the light is low and the bar is almost empty and it’s his last chance, his _last chance,_ Dean thinks maybe he can risk this. 

_Come on, Winchester,_ Dean tells himself, as his heart jackhammers against his ribs. 

He leans in, closes his eyes, and presses their lips together carefully. He keeps it soft and gentle, and focuses on the dry warmth of Cas’ lips, the roughness of Cas' stubble, the unnatural intensity of Cas' body heat, the electric tingle where grace runs alongside blood beneath Cas' skin-- Dean tries to commit it all to memory, to score down deep troughs in his brain and fill them all to the brim with nothing but this moment. 

Dean breaks the kiss and for an infinitely long moment he’s just hanging in the air, their mouths centimeters apart, and Dean has two choices now, he could pull back and let Cas go, or he could lean forward and press himself against Cas’ lips again and see if Cas opens up for him and damn the consequences, damn Heaven and all its assholes, damn the cupid, damn responsibility, damn every other time he tore himself away from Cas’ mouth, damn Dean (for the second time), and damn anyone watching him. 

Dean pulls back. 

Cas stares at him, looking like he’s about to say something that Dean won’t be able to handle hearing. 

Dean shakes his head, lips pressed tight together. 

Right then, the bell over the door jingles, and Dean spins around on his stool. “Showtime.” 

Dean's always getting left behind, because he’s never in his life had the guts to say "stay.” Even now, he can't say it, no matter how bad he wants to. It's just too big. 

Dean’s never going to see Cas again. But he’s never gonna forget him, either. And at least he’ll have this to remember.


	7. Heaven Can't Wait

The seventh time it happens, it’s-- it’s not anything. That’s just another favor. Helping a friend out. Because showing is always more effective than telling. That’s the mantra Dean repeats in his head while he’s driving away afterwards, white-knuckling the steering wheel. 

“What are you--”

“Lose the vest, come on,” Dean insists. 

Cas struggles out of the vest and Dean says, “That’s a little better. Alright.” Dean takes the vest from Cas' hands. “Yeah, there we go. Alright. And, uh, your buttons-- why don’t you unbutton it,” Dean instructs, gesturing at his collar. 

Cas obeys (“Okay,” Dean approves), perhaps too readily (“Th-that’s, that’s far enough, Tony Manero,” Dean laughs). 

Dean gives Cas a once-over, considering him holistically. If Dean was a chick, would he go for Cas? “Um… Yeah. Good. Alright.” 

_You’re a miracle worker, Winchester,_ Dean tells himself. _ABC should give you a show of your own. Extreme Makeover: Nerdy Angel Dude Edition._ “Listen to me.”

Cas puts on his attentive face, so Dean continues, “Always open the door for her, okay? Ask a lot of questions. They like that.” Cas nods along. “And, uh… oh, if she says she’s happy to go Dutch-- she’s lying. Alright?”

Cas nods again, more hesitantly this time. 

Dean squints at him. “‘Go Dutch’-- it, means, uh, paying for your own food,” he supplies. 

“Ah,” Cas says. “Thank you.”

“So you should always pay for her,” Dean continues, just to make it abundantly clear. 

Cas sighs. “You’re very knowledgeable about the intricacies of dating women.” 

“Well,” Dean says, shrugging modestly, “this is true. But hey, I’ve been a guy for longer than you have. Can’t blame you for never having the chance to pick up the basics.” Then Dean says, like an insane person, without his mouth even checking to see if his brain is okay with it, "You do know how to kiss a girl, right?"

Cas looks very offended, and goes, "Yes. I _did_ kiss the demon Meg, as you saw." 

Dean laughs, because what else can he do when faced with _that_ memory, and says, "Yeah, pizza man. But that's like. I mean that's a very uh,” he searches for the right word, waving his hand in the air a bit, “ _passionate_ , heat of the moment-type kiss. You can't bust that out on the first date. You’ll scare her off." 

Cas simply gawks at him with what Dean has come to mentally label, "Cas' What-The-Fuck-Are-You-Humans-Talking-About Face.” 

Dean stares back, and licks his lips, more out of nervousness than anything. Before he can chicken out, he leans in and puts one hand on the side of Cas' face and just gives him a slow, sweet, gentle kiss. Chaste and unthreatening, but just the right amount of intrigue, of desire. The kind of kiss you're supposed to give a girl on the first date, the kind of kiss that makes her decide to schedule a second date right on the spot. The kind of kiss Cas has never had before.

In small, secret moments over the years, Dean had thought about Cas being human. He had thought about human Cas wearing different clothes. He’d thought about human Cas breaking his arm. He’d thought about human Cas learning to wash his hair. He’d thought about human Cas figuring out which foods he had a taste for, and if Dean would know how to cook any of them. (If not, Dean thinks he could learn. He would learn, for Cas.) In especially small, especially secret moments, Dean had thought about human Cas kissing him. 

Dean’s kissed Cas before, more times than he’d prefer to admit to himself. He remembers burning hands and glowing eyes and sparks and static; he remembers feeling consumed, like Cas could shed his skin at any moment and engulf Dean in a ball of lightning. So, in those especially small and especially secret moments of his, he’d figured that probably kissing human Cas would be less overwhelming than kissing angel Cas. 

He was wrong. 

Right when Cas starts to move in response, to kiss Dean back, Dean shifts his hand from Cas’ face to his shoulder. He sits back in his seat, breaking the kiss.

And Dean goes, "Like that, you know?" 

And Cas looks at him and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. 

And Dean says, "Yeah. Alright! Go get ‘em, tiger!" and slaps Cas on the shoulder. 

And then he drives away.


	8. Stairway to Heaven

The eighth time it happens, it doesn’t really happen. 

Cas is completely still and silent for the entire drive back to the bunker, and when they get through the doors, he's the first down the stairs, practically power-walking towards the library before Dean and Sam can start to tear into each other. _Smart fucker_ , Dean bitches in the back of his mind while he’s having it out with Sam.

“--Look, until I jam that blade through that douchebag’s heart-- we are not a team. This is a dictatorship,” Dean grits out, feeling his father’s ghost rise up inside his chest. He holds tight to his anger, uses it to prop himself up in the face of Sam’s wrath, lets it unfurl throughout his whole body and stiffen his spine. 

“Now, you don’t have to like it, but that’s how it’s gonna be.” End of conversation. He turns on his heel and stalks away. Behind him, he’s aware of Sam hesitating for one, two, three seconds, before clomping away to stew in his bedroom like a fucking overgrown teenager. Dean’s shoulders relax infinitesimally, and he continues on his way into the library. 

“So. Batteries,” Dean opens, tossing down his duffel bag. He collapses heavily into the chair across from Cas.

Cas is predictable. “I’m fine.”

Dean is already in a bad mood, and he’s not feeling patient. “No, you’re not,” he hits back. “How long you got?”

Cas seems to understand that Dean’s not leaving without an admission, so he answers, “Long enough to destroy Metatron, I hope.” He levels his gaze at Dean, one eyebrow arched slightly, as if to say, _Happy?_

Dean nods curtly. They’ll fix this, he tells himself. He doesn’t know how, but they’ll fix it.

Then Cas continues: “But without an army... “ He trails off, shaking his head, and averts his eyes.

“Well, hey, you still got us.” Dean knows he and Sam don’t really count for much right now, and certainly not compared to an army of angels. He still tries for a smile anyway, aiming for reassuring but ending up somewhere around hollow. 

Cas breathes in and out once, and then abruptly leans forwards, across the table. “Dean,” he says, quietly urgent, flicking his eyes up to meet Dean’s. “Those bombers-- you don’t really think that I--”

Dean, discomfited by the earnest worry in Cas’ face, has to look away briefly. “Cas, you just gave an entire army up for one guy.” Dean closes his eyes for just a moment to gather his strength, and looks back at Cas. “No. There’s no way that you blew those people away.”

Cas nods slightly. He’s relieved, and trying not to show it. Dean is hit with a wave of-- something. Annoyance. Anxiety.

 _You shouldn’t,_ Dean thinks, agitated. _You shouldn’t care this much, Cas. You shouldn’t care this much about whether I believe you or not._

“You really believe we three will be enough?” Cas asks. _You shouldn’t be looking to me for answers._

“We always have been.” Dean quirks his lips into a lopsided smile, tired. 

Cas gazes at him, undisguised gratitude practically shining through his pores, and Dean feels something thrashing around in his stomach, like a fish drowning on land. _You shouldn’t_ care _this much, Cas. You shouldn’t care enough to give up your army. It’s not-- Cas, I don’t deserve it._ Dean has to get out of here as soon as possible, hit something, slam something, before he fully freaks on Cas.

Then, Cas does the worst possible thing he could do at that moment.

He leans forward, and Dean's mind whites out so that it isn't until he feels Cas' nose brush against his, feels Cas' breath puff against his lips, that he's able to wrest control of his body back and jerk away, just in time. 

“Cas,” Dean hisses, “what the _hell_ are you doing?”

Cas’ face falls like a body off the Golden Gate Bridge. “Dean, I.” He freezes. 

“What, Cas?” Dean’s blood pounds through his skull.

“When I-- Tonight, when I-- Dean, I chose you over the angels,” Cas forces out, agitated.

“I remember,” Dean bites out. “I was there.”

Cas seems borderline panicked, struggling with his words. “I just. Dean, I need you to understand _why_ I did that. And why I would only ever do something like that. For _you_.”

“Cas,” Dean warns, because he's suddenly terrified he knows where this is going, and he can’t, he just can’t. “Cas, I think you should maybe think about what you’re--”

Cas barrels on, staring Dean right in the eye, and Dean hates that he can't look away. “No, Dean, listen to me. Dean, you mean something to me that is--”

“Cas,” Dean repeats, gripping the arm of the chair so hard he half expects it to splinter beneath his hand. “Stop talking.”

Cas ignores him. “Dean,” Cas says, low and forceful, “Dean, I--”

Sam’s warning shout echoes through the bunker, and in an instant the two of them are on their feet ready to brawl. It ends up being Gadreel. Dean ends up trying to kill Gadreel. Cas ends up stopping Dean from killing Gadreel. And then Dean ends up dead. And then Dean ends up a demon. And so on, and so on. They never quite get the chance to pick up the conversation again. Ain’t that just the way.


	9. Lost & Found

The ninth time, it’s Dean’s fault. It’s all Dean’s fault. 

The front room is beige and dusty and it _feels_ like death, it _feels_ like a dead place. It’s too big and too small all at once, too light and too dark. Too suffocating and too exposed. There’s a sheet draped over the table, punched up in the middle, like a snow-covered mountain range in miniature. Dean rests a hand on the back of one of the chairs, remembering his hands doing the same thing to Cas’ shoulders, a hundred little touches over the years, a hundred little shoulder claps that he'd tried to never let linger. 

He walks around the table, watching the shape beneath the sheet, half waiting for a twitch, for a breath, for Cas to sit up and squint and say, “That was incredibly unpleasant,” and Dean could laugh and pull him into his arms and say, “I told you never to do that again, you asshole,” and Cas could say “I’m sorry, Dean,” and Dean could shake his head and say “Let’s just get you off this table, huh?” 

None of that happens, of course, because Cas is really dead. No deus ex machina is coming this time. God isn’t around anymore. Cas is dead, and his body is only getting off the table if Dean carries it. 

Dean curls his fingers around the edge of the sheet, flicks it back in one motion. He’s left Cas in his coat. Since, this time, Dean has a body to burn, he can’t imagine sending Cas off in anything else. Dean allows himself one last look at Cas’ face. He can’t handle it for more than a second. 

Dead people don't look peaceful. They don't look like they're sleeping. They just look dead. 

Dean replaces the sheet. 

Tearing the curtains into strips is almost too easy. He wishes they'd be tougher, that they'd resist his pull, that he'd have to strain and rip and curse. But they're soft as cheesecloth in his grip. There's no fight to them. 

Just as he’s tightening the first of the bonds around Cas’ ankles, he has to stop and squeeze his eyes shut, breathe through his nose. Cas is dead Cas is dead Cas is dead Cas is dead Cas is _dead_. If Dean had been faster. If Dean hadn’t let him go. If Dean had been a better friend. If Dean had been a better man. He couldn’t save Cas. He failed. He failed Cas _again_ , he failed Cas _for the last time_ , and Cas is dead. Cas is dead and there’s so much Dean will never get to-- 

He braces his hands on the table, glances up at where Cas’ nose is making a peak in the draping of the sheet. It looks so stupid. Absurd, like Cas is hiding under the covers, holding his breath. Dean wants to fucking scream from it. 

_I wish you weren’t dead_ , he thinks, simply and honestly and futilely. It’s all he can manage. _I wish you weren’t dead_. Then he drops his head and continues his work. 

If, after tying the final knot, Dean presses his lips ever so gently to Cas’ cold forehead through the sheet, no one ever has to know.


	10. Despair

The tenth time is the worst. And that really is saying something.

“I’ve got you,” Cas growls. His hand is fisted in Dean’s jacket, Dean’s arm slung across his back. Together they limp along through the bunker’s labyrinthine tunnels, running an incredibly high-stakes three-legged race. Pain blooms and throbs in Dean’s chest, sending spikes into his jaw, his spine, his arm. 

Billie calls out something behind them, but the blood pounding in Dean's head is making it a little hard to hear. Word of advice: you want your captive audience to really relish your final monologue? Don't saddle them with a heart attack while you give it.

Cas helps him stumble through the door to the dungeon, and Dean falls against the shelves, desperately grasping at the skeletal metal frame to keep himself standing as he wheezes, unable to fill his lungs no matter how hard he tries. He feels Cas’ hand on his arm, his side, groping for the knife he knows Dean keeps in his pocket. Through the pain Dean tries to crane his neck around to see what Cas is doing; he catches a glimpse of the blade just as it slices wetly across Cas’ palm. 

There’s another burst of pain, like Billie’s punching right through his ribs to clench his heart in her fist, and Dean gasps-- and then nothing. It’s gone. Dean straightens, turns around, and collapses back against the shelf, still panting. 

“Did it work?” Cas asks, definitely wigging out. 

Dean closes his eyes and nods. He takes a few breaths, swelling his lungs like he’s just emerged from deep underwater. Like he’s just burst out of his own grave.

Cas explains, “It blocked her grip on you.” He’s breathing pretty hard himself. 

There’s a loud bang against the door, and the sigil flares with light. 

“Dean, she said that wound-- was killing her,” Cas says. Another bang. “Maybe we can wait her out.”

Dean pushes himself off the shelf and wanders blindly away, deeper into the room, to the center of the devil’s trap. “Yeah, and if we can’t?” He’s tired.

Cas’ voice follows him: “Then we fight.”

Bang.

“We’ll lose,” Dean says hoarsely. He brushes his fingers across the back of the chair in the middle of the room, before dropping his arms down at his sides. “I just led us into another trap.” _You’ve struck out, Winchester._

Bang.

Cas’ mouth works like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Dean smiles hollowly at the ground. “All because I-- I couldn’t hurt Chuck.” He bites the name out violently. 

Bang.

“Because I was _angry_ ,” Dean continues, hating himself, “and because I just needed something to _kill_ , and because that’s all I know how to do.” The words rip out, unbidden, and when they’ve left, Dean almost doubles over with the sick feeling that comes of admitting a shameful truth, bracing his hands on the back of the chair to keep himself from curling up on the ground and dying there. 

“Dean.” 

“It was Chuck. All along,” Dean says helplessly, looking up at the sound of Cas’ footsteps.

Bang. 

“We never should’ve left Sam and Jack.” Dean’s voice is low. “We should be there with them now.” Bang. “Everybody’s gonna die, Cas. Everybody.” He straightens, but can’t meet Cas’ gaze. “I can’t stop it,” Dean says, quietly, almost in awe of the realization. This is it. He can’t fix this one. It’s the end. 

Bang. The both of them watch the door, the sigil pulsing with each beat. Bang.

Dean steps forth, floating on the faraway feeling that comes with total despair. He moves closer to Cas. “She’s gonna get through that door.”

“I know,” Cas says, a whisper.

“And she’s gonna kill you. And then she’s gonna kill me.” Dean spits that final word out; it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

Bang. 

Cas nods faintly. Dean’s breath shudders out of him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers to the floor. There’s an aching silence. 

Then he hears Cas’ voice: “Wait, there is--”

Dean looks up sharply, despite his misery. 

“There’s one thing she’s afraid of,” Cas goes on, sounding like he can barely believe it himself, “there’s-- there’s one thing. Strong enough to stop her.” He looks right at Dean, and his eyes are wide.

Dean draws his brows together and swallows. _What?_

“When Jack was dying. I--” Cas’ voice breaks a little on the syllable, but he soldiers on “--I made a deal. To save him.” He gazes at Dean, eyes suddenly shining with wetness, and that, more than anything else, scares the shit out of Dean.

“You what?” Dean asks, voice coming out smaller than he intends.

“The p-- the price was my life,” Cas says, and Dean feels sick. But Cas keeps fucking going. “When I experienced a moment of true happiness, the Empty would be summoned, and... it would take me forever.”

Dean blinks hard, cold dread coiling in his stomach and crawling up his throat, wrapping around his tongue. “Why are you telling me this now,” he forces out. 

Bang.

But apparently Dean is just an extra in whatever fucking monologue Cas is working through, as Cas simply continues: “I always wondered, ever since-- I took that burden, that curse, I wondered… _what_ it could be, what-- what _my_ true happiness could even look like.” 

Dean wants to yell, to scream, to shove Cas and say _What are you doing, we’re running out of time, if you have a goddamn plan then tell me, tell me, I don’t want us to die here, Cas._ Instead, Dean just stares at him, frozen. Cas has a strange expression on his face. 

“And I never found an answer.” Cas is quiet for a beat, then goes on, slowly, “Because the _one_ thing. I.. _want_...” Cas trails off, shakes his head. “It’s something I know I can’t have.”

Bang.

Dean starts, not from the noise, but because he realizes Cas’ expression has changed. Cas is-- now Cas is _smiling._

“But I think I _know_ \-- I think I _know_ now.” He’s smiling, he’s _smiling_ , why is he smiling, what is he _saying_. Cas breathes in calmly, like he’s standing in a field of wildflowers on a spring morning, like this isn’t a dungeon halfway to the center of the Earth that reeks of long-dried blood and ancient manila folders. “Happiness,” Cas starts, “isn’t in..the _having_. It’s in just _being_.” He holds the words carefully in his mouth as he says them, like he’s having a fucking revelation, like he’s got the answer to life the universe and everything. “It’s in just _saying_ it.” He sounds awestruck. Dean doesn’t know what’s going _on._

“What are you _talkin’_ about, man?” Dean pleads, desperate and unraveling. 

“I know…” Cas steps forward. “I know how you see yourself, Dean.” Taken aback, Dean almost recoils on instinct. But somehow he doesn’t, somehow he stays rooted to the floor as Cas creeps in closer, slowly, like Dean is a skittish horse about to spook. Maybe he is. 

“You see yourself the same way our enemies see you: you’re destructive, and you’re angry, and you’re broken, you’re-- you’re ‘Daddy’s blunt instrument,’” Cas says, and doesn’t that feel like a punch to the gut-- Cas remembers that? Cas remembers Dean telling him that, long after midnight in a motel room years and years ago, remembers Dean drunk, near tears telling Cas about making the deal for Sammy, about counting down that year, about how scared he was to go to Hell and how glad he is that Cas found him-- Cas has remembered that this whole time?

“--And you think that-- _hate_ and anger, that’s-- that’s what drives you, that’s who you are.” Cas shakes his head, still with that inexplicable little smile. “It’s _not_.” 

Dean can’t move. He can’t blink. Cas doesn’t seem to care. 

“And everyone who knows you _sees_ it. Everything you have ever done, the good _and_ the bad, you have done for _love._ You raised your little brother for love, you fought for this-- whole world for love. _That_ is who you are,” Cas says.

Dean’s a few feet away from Cas and Dean’s in the Pacific, a fishing boat tossed by fifty foot waves. Dean is in the dungeon waiting to hear another bang on the door and Dean is adrift in the atmosphere, a balloon gone too high, waiting to pop, to crash back to the ground. 

Nobody has ever said anything like this to Dean in his entire life. 

Cas continues, quiet, soft, reverent. “You’re the most… _caring_ man on Earth, you are the most selfless… _loving_ human being… I will ever know.” And then, there it is, this, this wide, wet smile, unlike anything Dean has ever seen on Cas’ face before. 

Bang. Dean swallows, and it hurts.

“You know, ever since we met, ever since I pulled you out of Hell--” Cas pauses, and a tear drops down his face. Dean is struck with the thought that he can’t remember ever seeing Cas cry before. More than a decade, and he’s never seen Cas cry. 

“--Knowing you has changed me.” Cas almost laughs after that, a shallow, shuddering sound. That smile, that fucking smile, remains, and the sincerity of it pierces Dean, like a sword through a dragon. 

Cas goes on, his voice tender in a way Dean simply didn’t know was possible for him. “Because you cared, I cared. I cared about-- you.” He holds Dean’s gaze for just a second, before smiling at the floor. “I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack.” Cas’ breath seems to hitch in his throat. “I cared about the _whole world_ \-- because of _you_.” 

Bang. 

“You changed me, Dean,” Cas says, like a creed. 

When Dean’s voice comes, it’s a dying man’s rasp. “Why does this sound like a goodbye,” he asks, knowing the answer already in the hollow of his chest. 

“Because it is.”

Dean sees every single time it’s gone wrong. He sees every single time Cas has gone away. He sees a cloudless day at Stull Cemetery. He sees a rift on a grey mountain. He sees Cas’ back turned in the bunker. He sees a poisoned reservoir. He sees the Devil’s crypt. He sees the night sky above a lakeside cabin. He sees psych ward whites. He sees an armchair. He sees a dimly lit bar. He sees a cavalcade leaving Chitaqua. He sees a garish motel room in OKC. He sees a ring of fire. He sees the wrecked kitchen of a prophet. He sees all of these, and more. He sees Cas, distraught across the library table, prevented from saying the thing that Dean knows in his heart Cas is about to say now. 

“I love you.”

Something cracks inside Dean. He's not-- he's not prepared. Cas can't just say he loves Dean. Cas can't just love him-- can't love him back. Not like this. Not when Cas is about to leave again. Not when he's about to die. 

Dean shakes his head, utterly overwhelmed. “Don’t do this, Cas.” _Don’t you go away from me again. Don’t you do that._

Cas just keeps on smiling.

Bang.

Cas gazes at him, like he’s drinking Dean in. Dean hears a sudden sound behind him and whips around. An oily blackness is seeping through the wall, bubbling and coiling like it's ready to spring-- _no_ , it can’t, it’s too soon, Dean hasn’t even-- he just-- he needs time to think he needs--

Bang, and this time the door swings open. 

“Cas,” Dean chokes out. It can’t. He can’t. 

Cas takes one last step forward, and lays his hand on Dean’s shoulder. _Just like old times,_ a numb, faraway part of Dean’s brain howls hysterically, _One more for the road?_

“Goodbye, Dean.”

In one swift, smooth motion, Cas pulls Dean close and kisses him, firmly and reverently. Dean feels the wetness of Cas' tears against his cheeks, anointing him. He can't breathe. He's outside of his own body, paralyzed and glued to the spot. It can't be happening like this. It's not enough. He's not ready. It isn't _fair._

Cas tapers off the kiss, and Dean's bottom lip catches between his for just one aching moment.

And then Cas is gone.


	11. Need You By My Side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE'VE GONE OFF THE RAILS! FULL-BLOWN CANON DIVERGENCE FROM THIS POINT FORWARD!

Dean takes full responsibility for the eleventh time.

Yeah, there's an eleventh time. The thing is that death is cheap when you’re a Winchester, and in Dean’s book? Cas is a goddamn Winchester if there ever was one. Come on, he's come back how many times already?

This time, however, Cas made it pretty clear that he wouldn't be digging himself out: all part of his stupid, infuriating, beautiful, heartbreaking, selfless plan. He went willingly and intended to stay gone.

But, well. Cas' deal never said anything about _Dean_ reaching in and yoinking his self-sacrificial ass out of the sludge, did it? 

Jack is hands-off now, of course. Says Cas made the choice to summon the Empty of his own free will and Jack can't mess with that. _However,_ Jack says to Dean. _If you're ever looking for reading material. This one is very good._ He conjures a musty spellbook out of thin air and holds it out into the space between them.

For a moment Dean is fiercely reminded of a Cas from many years ago, who slanted his eyes at Dean outside a motel and said _Just so you understand. Why I can't help._

But then Jack goes and actually winks, which kind of kills it. Dean takes the book. 

On a sunny day, Dean dumps a bloodstained jacket, a box of salt, a lighter, and a knife into the passenger seat of his car. He goes alone, and Sam doesn't question it.

Dean drives for a long time, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel with equal parts anticipation and anxiousness. There’s a lot that can go wrong here. The spell could be a dud. Or someone else, like Lucifer or the Empty itself, could hitch a ride to Earth. Or-- and this option is the most terrifying to Dean-- Cas may not want to come back. Cas might hate Dean for doing this. 

Dean takes his right hand off the wheel and crosses it over his chest to squeeze his left shoulder, not tight enough to hurt. Just tight enough to ground him. 

Dean grinds to a stop on the shoulder of the road, in a place where it’s flat and green and empty and open as far as the eye can see. The sun beats down overhead, and as Dean swings his legs out of the car he squints and brings up a hand to shield his eyes. He wanted to pick a day like this, though. Cas likes sunny days. Dean doesn’t want Cas to come back and immediately be faced with an abandoned cabin or a dingy basement. He wants Cas to come back and feel the sun on his skin, first thing. 

Crouching in the packed gravel of the shoulder, Dean pours a salt line. He lays his jacket down, careful, folded so that the handprint faces up at him. The knife slides across his palm easy as anything. The lighter takes a few tries to get going. He reads the words off a sheet of paper, sweating about the pronunciation only a little. 

He doesn’t have to wait very long. There’s a crack like lightning, and then there’s Cas. 

Standing a couple yards away, knee deep in the unmown grass off the side of the road, Cas holds his arms out in front of himself, twisting them from side to side and stretching his fingers, like he can’t believe he has a body again. Dean stands quietly, awkwardly, leaning back against the hood of his car with his arms braced behind him, definitely not trembling, not even a little bit. Cas is just-- there. Looking exactly the same as when he went. Trenchcoat and all. (Dean had packed a spare set of clothes in the backseat, just in case Cas showed up in his birthday suit. Honestly, he’s fucking relieved he won’t need them. He’s not sure he could handle that on top of everything else.) Cas drops his arms to his side and cranes his neck up at the sky, eyes closed. Dean watches him, heart racing like a rabbit’s. 

Finally, Cas looks up, and meets Dean’s gaze. Dean is tense, half expecting to see anger or fear, to get chewed out or punched. But Cas just looks… mildly confused. He tilts his head to the side, and Dean thinks, with his chest so tight it hurts, _There you are._

“Dean?” Cas asks. 

“Heya, Cas,” Dean says weakly, trying for a grin. 

Cas steps out of the grass and onto the shoulder. “Dean… What…”

“I brought you back,” Dean blurts, still frozen in his position against the car. “I-- Jack told me how. Kind of. He’s basically the big cheese now. We-- we won. It’s-- a lot happened, and we’ll catch you up later, I swear, but we won, Cas.” Dean swallows. “So I brought you back,” he says again, somewhat lamely. 

“Dean,” Cas says, eyebrows slowly drawing together, “You didn’t need to. I did this to keep you safe, I-- I was at peace with my decision.”

Dean screws his courage to the sticking place. “Well, I wasn’t.” Cas looks at him. Dean clears his throat, a little desperately, before he continues, “I wasn’t. Okay with it. You being gone.”

Cas, eyebrows trying for the gold medal in concerned expressions, takes another step forward. 

“I want you to stay, Cas,” Dean blurts, dropping his gaze to the gravel by his boots. “I-- I can’t deal with you being gone, man, I didn’t want-- I can’t handle it without you. I never can.” He lets out a shuddering breath. “So I brought you back. I’m sorry. But I couldn’t, man. I couldn’t just leave you there.” 

Cas is very quiet, so Dean picks his head up. Cas looks a little like he’s been smacked between the eyes with a two by four. Dean figures, what the hell, better keep up his momentum while he’s got it, so he goes on: “And listen-- I don’t care about the deal. I don’t care about the Empty, okay? If it’s coming after you, we’ll stop it. We’ll-- we’ll burn that fuckin’ bridge when we come to it, alright? We’ll figure it out.” He raises his eyebrows, catches Cas’ eye. “Cas. I promise.”

Dean’s not sure what he expects Cas to say. Maybe _Okay_ , though _Screw you_ seems about equally likely. At least _some_ sort of direct response to the awkward, halting speech Dean just made. What Cas says is: “You’re hurt.”

“What?” Dean says, flabbergasted. 

“Your hand,” Cas clarifies quietly. “It’s injured.”

Dean removes the hand in question from the hood of the car and wipes it self-consciously on his jeans. “I-- yeah. Blood. For the spell. It’s nothing.”

Cas takes yet another step forward, and this time he’s close enough to touch. He grabs Dean’s wrist and turns his hand over, palm up. “Let me.”

Dean nods, numbly. Cas hovers his other hand over Dean’s, fingers splayed. There’s the glow, and the heat, and the tingle, and then Dean’s hand is good as new. Cas lets go. Dean catches Cas' wrist as it falls, holding it between his fingers. “Cas.”

Cas’ eyes flick up from their hands to Dean’s face. Dean swallows dryly. “Cas,” he repeats. “That stuff you said…” Something wobbles in Cas’ gaze. Apprehension? Dean pushes through. “You meant it, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cas says, almost a whisper. “Every word.”

Dean closes his eyes briefly, heart hammering out of his goddamn chest like he’s sixteen goddamn years old, before looking Cas dead in the eye. His hand is still wrapped around Cas’ wrist. “Would you. Would you still want me? Because, Cas, you… you can have me.”

“I can have you,” Cas repeats, raspy, hesitant, faraway. 

Dean nods. 

Abruptly, Cas wrenches his hand free and steps back. Dean’s stomach drops into his ankles. 

Dean thinks this rejection might actually be fatal, so it’s great when Cas shakes his angel blade out of his sleeve. Thank God. Put Dean out of his misery. But then, Cas holds it out to Dean, hilt first.

“Cas,” Dean says, freaked out. 

“Cut out my grace,” Cas says. 

Dean’s jaw drops. “What?”

Cas looks terrified, but his hand presenting the blade is perfectly steady. “If I’m not an angel, the Empty has no claim over me.”

“But, Cas…” Dean starts, shellshocked. “You’ll be-- human.”

“I know,” Cas says. His eyes are wide and his jaw is set. “I’ll need help. Adjusting to humanity again.” He levels Dean with a look then, and Dean gets it, suddenly, like a baseball bat to the back of the skull. “Will you help me this time?”

Dean’s throat convulses desperately for a few seconds. “Yes.”

“I’ll need a place to stay,” Cas says. "I’ll need food. I’ll need clothes. I’ll need all-- all sorts of things.”

“Cas,” Dean chokes out, “Yes. Anything, Cas. Anything, I swear. Everything.”

Cas steps in, so that distance between them is the sum and total length of the angel blade, pommel to Dean’s heart and point to Cas’. “Dean,” Cas presses, firm, though his nervousness is belied by the anxiety held between his eyebrows, “Do you love me?”

Dean swallows. Those aren’t words that Dean Winchester ever really says to people, not out loud. He didn’t grow up hearing them. They don’t trip easy off his tongue. They’re some of the biggest, scariest words Dean knows. But Cas… Cas deserves to hear them. Dean wraps a hand around the angel blade, taking it and carefully placing it onto the hood behind his back. 

“I love you,” Dean says, and means it. 

He half expects to crumble into dust, to drop dead on the spot, to want to take it back. The words have been knocking around inside his chest for so long, like a second heartbeat, Dean had no idea what it could possibly feel like if they ever got out. And he is nervous, and he is sweaty, and he is scared. But he also feels relieved. Because the words sound _right_ floating there between them. So Dean doesn’t regret it, not an inch. 

Cas looks dazed. Dean licks his lips. “Is that. Are we good? Are we settled?”

“Uh,” Cas thinks out loud, squinting. “For now? Yes.”

“Okay. Fantastic. So,” Dean says. Finally, he removes his other hand from the hood behind him. “Don’t freak out?”

“I never 'freak out,'” Cas says warily, which is a total lie, but whatever. Good enough. 

So Dean smiles, grabs Cas by the lapels, and kisses him. 

It’s not like the first kiss, which was an impulsive last-night-on-Earth hookup in the front seat. 

It’s not like the second kiss, which was an epitaph for someone else’s love. 

It’s not like the third kiss, which was angry. 

It’s not like the fourth kiss, which was awesome, until it wasn’t. 

It’s not like the fifth kiss, which was a penitent gesture, almost immediately betrayed. 

It’s not like the sixth kiss, which was selfish and mournful.

It’s not like the seventh kiss, which was some cowardly high-school bullshit. 

It’s not like the eighth kiss, which was a mistake. 

It’s not like the ninth kiss, which was a gift given too late. 

It’s not like the tenth kiss, which was a goodbye. 

This kiss is a hello. Hello, forever. Hello for the rest of our lives. Hello every morning and every night. Hello for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Hello always. 

Hello, Cas. Hello, Dean.


	12. Want You In My Life

Dean doesn’t count when it happens anymore. He’s got much more important things to think about nowadays, like running errands.

“Alright, you got your list?” Dean asks, and Cas gives him a look. 

“I don’t need a _list_ ,” Cas pronounces fussily, and Dean rolls his eyes, because Cas absolutely does need a list. One time Dean sent him into Home Depot for a box of screws and Cas came back with three geraniums, a solar light shaped like a seahorse, a set of fancy drill attachments, like two dozen friggin’ paint chips, and no screws whatsoever. 

“So that’s a no,” Dean says, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket with a flourish. "Luckily, I came prepared." Cas takes the list, but not without an eyeroll of his own. 

“Alright. You’re gonna hit up the supermarket, and you’re not gonna get distracted by any weird gimmick foods. Even if they're on sale. Especially if they're on sale,” Dean instructs, “And I’m gonna swing by the drugstore for your hippie pills.”

“They’re _vitamins_ ,” Cas protests. 

“You text Sam too much,” Dean dismisses. “I’ll get your gummies and, like, a shitload more painkillers, because we’re both old and creaky as fuck, apparently. And then we regroup here.”

Cas nods dutifully. 

“Alright,” Dean confirms, opening the car door. “See you soon. Text if you need something.”

“See you soon,” Cas echoes.

Dean gives him a little salute, which Cas returns with two fingers, and then they’re off to complete their respective missions. 

The drugstore is a further walk from the car than the grocery store is, so when Dean gets back, Cas is already waiting there, leaned up against the passenger side door, dark hair peeking over the roof of the car. 

Dean whistles as he comes around the side, and Cas turns around to face him. Dean raises his little plastic bag up, shaking it around, like, _Ta-da!_ Cas nods approvingly and waits for Dean to unlock the car. 

They clamber inside together, Dean slinging his bag into the backseat, and Cas cradling his to his chest. “You got the graham crackers?” Dean asks, mentally running through the list.

“Yes,” Cas replies.

“And the limes?”

“I got the regular kind, since they didn’t have key limes.”

“That’s fine. And the sweetened condensed milk?”

“Yes.”

“And the--”

“Dean,” Cas interrupts. “I got everything on the list.” And with that, he hefts the bag down into the footwell, between his knees. 

Dean rolls his eyes, and turns the key in the ignition. Dean’s baby cooperates with a throaty purr, classy and badass as ever whether she’s tearing down the highway or crawling through the grocery store parking lot, and Dean’s just thrown an arm over the back of the seat to watch behind him as he backs out, when he sees it peeking out of the brown paper bag. He shifts the car back into park.

“Cas,” Dean says, “What is that.”

Cas follows Dean’s line of sight to the offending object and says, “Oh.” He reaches down, pulls a bright pink bottle out of the bag and presents it to Dean. “It’s called Fun Wine.”

Dean stares. “Dude. It’s pink.”

“It’s a strawberry rosé moscato,” Cas explains, tapping one of the little clipart strawberries on the label to illustrate his point.

“It’s got emojis on it,” Dean says, pained. 

“I like emojis.”

“Cas,” Dean says, “Do I look like a Fun Wine person to you?”

“No,” Cas replies. “But I thought we could try something new together.” He tilts his head at Dean, managing to straddle the line between beseeching and challenging as only Cas can, with nothing but a subtle quirk of the eyebrow. God, this guy. God, Fun Wine. 

Dean gives in, shakes his head. “The things I do for you.”

Cas breaks into a little smile and slips the bottle back into the bag. Dean reaches for the gear stick.

“Hey,” Cas says, so Dean stills and looks back at him. Cas puts one hand on Dean’s thigh, leans across the seats, and kisses him. Dean closes his eyes. It’s been years by now, and sparks may no longer literally fly, electricity may no longer literally crackle between them-- but it never, ever gets old. Dean is gonna be kissing Cas for the rest of his life, no two ways about it. 

“Hey,” Dean murmurs against Cas’ lips. He pecks a quick second kiss to Cas’ mouth before drawing back and shifting into reverse. “If you wanted to sell me on the Dumb Wine, you could’ve just led with that.”

Cas goes back to his own side of the car. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” he says seriously.

 _Next time,_ Dean’s brain thrums warmly. _Next time,_ his heart harmonizes. _Shaddup,_ Dean tells them both. _Couple of saps._ His brain and his heart, however, ignore him and keep on singing, the traitors. 

Dean doesn’t count when it happens anymore. He lost track a long time ago.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. fun wine is a real thing. i have seen it with my own two eyes. truly a fantastic example of "graphic design is my passion" in the real world.
> 
> 2\. you MAY have seen some passages from this fic, slightly edited, on tumblr-- I DID NOT PLAGIARIZE THEM LOL, THOSE POSTS ARE MINE. i wrote the original posts before i started to work on this fic in earnest and in fact only decided to write this fic due to positive feedback on a couple of those feverishly-written paragraphs. if you’re interested in seeing some of the very rough, very slapdash, very run-on-sentence-ridden first drafts for a few of these scenes, you can find them below!
> 
> [chapter 1 draft](https://forgiveyourwaywardson.tumblr.com/post/642221128594636800/they-escape-without-having-to-rumble-with-security)   
> [chapter 4 draft ](https://forgiveyourwaywardson.tumblr.com/post/643958969598083072/in-hunter-heroici-when-dean-is-sat-down-on-the-bed)   
> [chapter 7 draft](https://forgiveyourwaywardson.tumblr.com/post/642122353186422784/deans-in-his-car-with-cas-hes-given-his-sage)
> 
> thanks for reading! :D
> 
> if you're interested, im on tumblr [@forgiveyourwaywardson](https://forgiveyourwaywardson.tumblr.com)


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